ELECTRODOS SERIGRAFIADOS

The Freedmen’s Bureau, Free Labor Ideology, and Freedmen’s Rights, 1865-1868

Just after sunset, on April 17, 1867, gunshots rang out near Benton, the parish seat of Bossier Parish. Some white men quickly went to investigate and found Sullivan Drew, a local freedman, shot in his leg and abdomen. Drew died from his wounds that same night. Nearby bootprints matched a pair that William A. Hargus had purchased shortly before, along with a bottle of whiskey also found at the scene. Civil authorities quickly issued warrants for the arrest of Hargus and his companion James McCanly. Though initially apprehended, they escaped before a justice of the peace could hear their case, and made their way to Arkansas. Although Hargus and McCanly had done the shooting, no one in Benton doubted that Lee Arick, a local planter, had hired both men to commit the murder. He had resented Drew ever since the freedman had married Arick’s former slave Charity, with whom the planter had, in her words, had intercourse “as man and wife […] occasionally and sometimes twice a week before the surrender.”

Once free, Charity had insisted that they either end the relationship, or that Arick “live with me and let other women alone.” He refused, fearing for his reputation if he openly lived with a black mistress. Charity, by necessity, continued to live on his place, since “I was sickly and had no home and did as he wanted me to.” In the summer of 1866, however, she met Sullivan, who proposed to live with her, to which she consented on condition that he get a license and legally marry her. When Arick heard of her plans, he threatened to beat her if she married a colored man, but she did so anyway on November 1. A few weeks later, Arick told the freedman Andrew Scott that “Charity is doing me wrong, such men as [Sullivan Drew] ought to be killed. If you will break it up between them I will give you twenty-five dollars or more. [Drew] must and shall be killed.” Although Scott refused the offer, a few months later, Sullivan Drew lay dead.1

Despite Radical Republicans’ political victories over President Johnson and the passage of the Reconstruction Act just a month prior to Sullivan Drew’s murder, limited security in fact existed for the freedpeople in remote areas of the rural South. Conservative whites not only controlled local government, they also monopolized the resources that

1 _{‘April 30, 1867, Shreveport, Flood to Sterling,’ NARA, RG 105, M1905, reel 100, frame 391; Solomon K.}

Smith, “The Freedmen’s Bureau in Shreveport: The Struggle for Control of the Red River District,” Louisiana

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provided de facto political power: land, arms, money, education, and military training and experience. Although the federal government had made a formal commitment to protect the freed slaves, the army was preoccupied with its own demobilization and not suited to such a police task. In many places, the only institution that stood between the recently freed black population and Southern whites’ desire to reestablish their political, economic, and social dominance was the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, better known as the Freedmen’s Bureau.

We must thank the diligent work of local Freedmen’s Bureau agents that testimonies such as Charity Drew’s have been preserved. In the Bureau’s absence, she and countless other freedpeople would have had no appeal from the nearly indiscriminate terror perpetrated by conservative whites who wished to reestablish their racial hegemony. At the same time, the Bureau’s records testify to the inherent weaknesses of the agency. Despite the good intentions and conscientious efforts of many local officers, they could often do little more than record the victims’ testimony. In the Drew case, as in so many others, there is no record of the perpetrators facing any formal legal proceedings for their crime.

Dunningite historians saw the Bureau as an oppressive agent of Northern and Radical Republican domination of the South. In Louisiana, Ficklen concluded, it was both “a failure and as an unwelcome agent between employer and employee.” Fleming is slightly more nuanced, admitting the good intentions of at least the senior leadership and lauding the Bureau’s economic relief efforts – at least for whites – in the immediate aftermath of the war. The supposed incompetence, Republican partisanship, and greed of most local agents, however, ensured that “it failed to exert a permanently wholesome influence” and contributed to the “alienation of the two races […] and the ill feelings then aroused were destined to persist into a long and troubled future.”2

George R. Bentley’s 1955 overview of the Bureau’s history offered a somewhat more nuanced perspective, but over the following decades revisionist scholars radically reevaluated the institution. Two years before the publication of Bentley’s study, John and La Wanda Cox had already concluded that “even the most friendly studies of the Bureau have exaggerated its weaknesses and minimized its strength.” Subsequent revisionists praised the Bureau for its support of the freedmen, while others reversed the Dunningite narrative entirely and accused the Bureau of not being Radical enough. This development exemplifies the rapid development

2

Ficklen, Reconstruction in Louisiana through 1868, 137; Fleming, Sequel of Appomattox, 15, 117, and chapter 4.

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in Reconstruction and Freedmen’s Bureau historiography in just a few short decades. Whereas earlier authors had criticized the Bureau for interfering too much in the South, many revisionist scholars believed its greatest fault lay in not doing enough to help the emancipated slaves.3

From the 1970s on, historians of the Freedmen’s Bureau began to take a more moderate approach to their subject. This new Freedmen’s Bureau historiography paralleled the post-revisionist developments in the broader field of Reconstruction scholarship. It emphasized institutional and ideological constraints that hampered the Bureau, the essentially moderate character of even its more radical programs, and increasingly studied the functioning of the Bureau at the state and local level, rather than its national leadership. Robert Harisson, in a review of this recent literature, concludes that although the Bureau “made an important difference to the lives of freedpeople and left its mark on the social and economic institutions of the postbellum South,” the Bureau nevertheless failed to achieve many of its original goals. This failure was “as much a consequence of the ‘almost insuperable obstacles’ that the agency faced as of its own inadequacies.”4

Such a critical narrative, which emphasizes the Bureau’s shortcomings, raises an analytical conundrum of its own. If the Freedmen’s Bureau and its agents acted as moderates who sought to mediate an equitable and balanced compromise between the interests of laborers and landowners, why then did contemporaries in the South, both white and black, view them primarily as allies of the recently freed slaves? In reality, as Foner notes, “most Southern whites resented the Bureau as […] a barrier to the authority reminiscent of slavery that the planters hoped to impose,” while blacks remained committed “to the Bureau as an embodiment of the nation’s responsibility.” To understand the firm commitment of the freedpeople to the Bureau and the Southern whites equally passionate hatred, involves more

3 _{George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1955);} John Cox and LaWanda Cox, “General O. O. Howard and the ‘Misrepresented Bureau,’” The Journal of Southern History 19, no. 4 (1953): 428; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, especially 304–316. Other works in this vein include: Oubre, Forty Acres and a Mule; Martin Abbott, The Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina, 1865- 1872 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967); John A Carpenter, Sword and Olive Branch: Oliver Otis Howard (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999); LaWanda Cox, “The Promise of Land for the Freedmen,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45, no. 3 (1958): 413–40.

4 _{The term ‘New Reconstruction historiography was coined by John David Smith: “‘The Work It Did Not Do} Because It Could Not’: Georgia and the ‘New’ Freedmen’s Bureau Historiography,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 82, no. 2 (1998): 331–49. For a recent collection of essays that reflect these developments see: Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, eds., The Freedmen’s Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999). For Louisiana: Howard A White, The Freedmen’s Bureau in Louisiana (Louisiana State University Press, 1970). An overview of this historiography can be found in Robert Harrison, “New Representations of a ‘Misrepresented Bureau’: Reflections on Recent Scholarship on the Freedmen’s Bureau,” American Nineteenth Century History 8, no. 2 (2007): especially 212, 213.

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than a reference to “the irreconcilable interests of former masters and former slaves as each sought to define the meaning of emancipation.” While undoubtedly true, such ‘irreconcilable interests’ merely explain why the kind of mediation the Bureau attempted failed, not why Southerners of both races consistently felt that it operated to the benefit of the freedpeople, regardless of how moderate or even conservative its policies may appear in retrospect.5

To resolve this apparent paradox, we must take into account the fundamentally asymmetrical power relations that characterized racial relations in the postwar South. In the immediate aftermath of slavery, the black population lacked the economic, educational and institutional resources necessary to negotiate effectively with the landowners, even in the absence of endemic racism. Without federal interference, Southern whites could and would quickly have reduced the freedpeople to a condition that, in Charles Schurtz’s words, “would not be exactly the re-establishment of slavery in its old form, but as for the practical working of the system with regard to the welfare of the freedmen, the difference would only be for the worse.” Under such conditions, any federal interference that sought to provide some measure of economic and legal security for the freedpeople encroached on what Southern whites considered both their interest and their prerogative. As Ted Tunnell puts it, whenever an “agent balanced a landowner’s word on the scales of truth against a freedman’s, he transgressed a cardinal rule of white supremacy. Even if the agent decided in his favor, he was unlikely to be grateful.”6 Indeed, no matter how equitably the Bureau agents tried to balance the interests of the freedpeople and the planters, the result of their interference inevitably gave more to the black population than they would have obtained in its absence.

This returns us to the case of Sullivan Drew’s murder. The case is drawn from a report by the Shreveport Bureau agent Martin Flood and reflects the kind of dilemmas agents faced time and again in adjudicating conflicts between freedpeople and planters. Although slavery had ended, Lee Arick used his economic leverage, as employer and landlord, to pressure Charity into remaining as his occasional concubine against her expressed will. Charity, meanwhile, clearly understood emancipation to entail freedom from such sexual exploitation but had no course of appeal open to her. The arrangement was hardly likely to have been

5 _{Foner, Reconstruction, 143, 168, 169, 170.. Foner himself notes the tension between the critical assessment of} the Bureau by many revisionist scholars and the “unrelenting hostility” that Southern whites felt towards it. His conclusion that the Bureau acted as “the agent of the northern free labor ideology” however places too much emphasis on conflicting ideologies, while ignoring the fundamental power asymmetry and racial antagonism that was the context of Southern labor relations. Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 101.

6

CSS, 39-1, Sen. Ex. 2, 24; Ted Tunnell, “Marshall Harvey Twitchell and the Freedmen’s Bureau in Bienville Parish,” Louisiana History 33, no. 3 (1992): 249.

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formalized in a contract, placing it beyond the cognizance of the Bureau agent. She hoped to find security from Arick by marrying Sullivan Drew, but even then their economic situation made them vulnerable to retribution, as they continued, from necessity, to live on Arick’s plantation. He could easily mobilize his resources, reach out to desperadoes, and have Sullivan Drew murdered in cold blood.

While his hired thugs fled the state, Arick himself left for New Orleans where he could avoid any difficult questions Flood might wish to ask him. Flood urged his superiors to have all the parties involved arrested and tried in New Orleans, since they “never will be brought to justice by Civil Authorities” in Shreveport. No record exists, however, of the case being prosecuted, and given the Bureau’s limited resources it is unlikely that Hargus and McCanly were ever caught. Given the circumstantial nature of the evidence against Arick, moreover, even a federal court would have difficulty convicting him, so long as at least one white juror sat on his case. Flood therefore, despite his best intentions, could do little more for Charity than record her testimony and urge his superiors to forceful action that he most likely knew would be futile.

Despite his apparent powerlessness, the whites involved would still have seen the Bureau as an unwarranted interference. In its absence, Arick, had he not been able to prevent the marriage in the first place, might have avoided the expense of hiring others to do his killing for him. Neither would he have needed to take the troublesome precaution of leaving for New Orleans after the fact. Less tangible, but perhaps even more important, the Bureau offered black victims such as Charity a venue to legitimately and officially present their grievances. However limited its subsequent actions, the Bureau thus helped substantiate the freedpeople’s claim to citizenship by giving official sanction to their voice. In such ways, despite the obvious shortcomings of the Bureau from our twenty-first century perspective, it nevertheless acted as a curb on the impunity with which whites otherwise might dominate the recently freed slaves.

A Promise Betrayed

Before his appointment as the first assistant commissioner for the Freedmen’s Bureau in Louisiana, Thomas Conway had gained much relevant experience as head of the wartime Bureau of Free Labor, with responsibility for the freedpeople in Union areas of the state. His final report on the Freedman’s Bureau’s institutional predecessor offers a tantalizing preview of many of the problems and dilemmas which the Bureau’s agents would face on a much

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larger scale, as well as reminding us of the potential for significant change which the Bureau embodied and which its later shortcomings tend to obscure. 7

Conway complained of a lack of funding and other resources at his disposal, despite his responsibility for “thousands of destitute freedmen [that] came through our lines.” He nevertheless succeeded in establishing four ‘home colonies,’ plantations on which freedmen worked for their own account. The large crops produced there, “showed a triumph of the free labor system,” proving the “freedmen to be not idlers but industrious.” Conway had high hopes for future prosperity based on the redistribution of at least 60,000 acres of land to the freedpeople, which promised “greater profits, and by far more happiness, to the white and colored populations of the State, under the influence of free labor, and in a very few years, than was ever before enjoyed.”

Conway also reported on the numerous obstacles he encountered, most of which could be traced to the persistent resistance by the local white population to policies aimed at substantiating the liberty of their former slaves. A meeting of planters in November of 1864 drew up a series of rules and regulations to govern labor relations, which, according to Conway, “would have brought the freedmen again into bondage, in fact, if not in name.” These regulations gave planters complete control over the laborers, who could not leave the plantation, own stock, or grow produce for their own account except with the permission of the landowner. Although light offenses might be punished by fines, the planters insisted on the necessity of corporal punishment in “obstinate cases” on the premise that “the whole study, aim and object of the negro laborer now is, how to avoid work, and yet have a claim for wages, rations, clothes, etc.”

Instead of these regulations, the commanding general, Stephen A. Hurlbut, issued orders which closely resembled General Banks’s wartime system of contract labor. These orders incorporated what officials considered a reasonable wage to working freedpeople, in addition to prohibiting corporal punishment and guaranteeing them “just treatment, wholesome rations, comfortable clothing, fuel and medical attendance, and the opportunity of instruction of children.” On the other hand, the system compelled the freedpeople to work faithfully for the planter they contracted with, by withholding half their wages until the end of the year as well as instituting a system of fines and penalties for time lost. Such a system was

7 _{The following paragraphs derive from: Thomas W. Conway, Final Report of the Bureau of Free Labor,} Department of the Gulf, to Major General E.R.S. Canby, Commanding (New Orleans: Times Book and Job Office 1865).

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a far cry from the free labor idyll of small farmers working independently on redistributed lands that Conway envisioned for the future. Instead, it aimed to balance the interests of both laborers and planters in order to get cotton production up and running again in the wake of the war.

Although many planters expressed public support for Hurlbut’s system when proposed, they opposed its implementation, in particular the collection of a three dollar poll tax on every hand employed, two-thirds of which the planters had to pay. Those who had been the strongest supporters of the Confederacy, “with sons in the rebel army as Colonels, Generals, etc.” objected most forcefully to the new labor system and complained most bitterly of oppression by the federal government. They paid the freedpeople their wages grudgingly and where possible would take “advantage of the freedmen, and the freedmen, knowing this, distrusted them.” Nor could the freedpeople expect succor from the state authorities who ignored “the orders of the Commanding General of the Department, the laws of Congress, and the orders of the War Department […] as far as they could.” Conway feared that “if the freedmen were left to the mercy of the people who formerly owned them as slaves, or to officers of their selection, we might with one count of the fingers of our hands number the years which the race would spend with us.”

Despite these obstacles, Conway expressed a decidedly optimistic prospect for the future of free labor. Under the guidance of the Bureau, and the influence of entrepreneurial